What’s In My Camera Bag . . ?

. . . A little over 3 years ago I did a short video for Youtube of what was in my camera bag at that time (video at the bottom of this post and somewhat embarrasingly shot in portrait and don’t get me started on the hairstyle. 😀 ).

Back then, my ‘weapon’ of choice was a silver-chromed Leica M8 with a 50mm f/1.8 Canon Serenar and a Voigtlander 35mm f/2.5 Color Skopar. My bag of choice was the ‘M-Classics’ messenger style bag.

Today, the bag remains but the kit has changed beyond all recognition.

Technology has advanced greatly since both the video and the M8 were made, but the need to keep the kit as light and simple as possible has remained the same. After all, lugging around a bag full-to-the-brim with large amounts of equipment and often for up to 8 hours at a time, would get very tedious very quickly.

To that end I still carry everything in the much used `M-Classics` messenger style bag. It’s a brilliantly capable and very well made bag but has little in the way of padding (like the old Leica bag it’s modelled on). Therefore I have to be careful when putting it down on hard surfaces.

As regular visitors to the Street Photography Blog will know, the cameras and lenses are now:-

A Fuji X-E1 with XF 35mm f/1.4 lens and a `Tap & Dye` leather strap.

A Leica M2 with Voigtlander 50mm f/1.5 LTM lens and a cheap leather strap from China. I keep meaning to swap the straps over because I think the M2 deserves the luxury of the Tap & Dye?

A Sekonic L308s light meter.

3 or 4 rolls of 36 exposure Ilford HP5+ and FP4+ home rolled film.

Silver-plated card holder and `business cards`. Very handy in the UK for when you photograph a building and a policeman thinks you’re a terrorist, or you photograph a woman and she claims you’re a pervert, or when a child walks into shot and the mother says you’re a paedophile. 😮

Spare battery for the Fuji and a portable charger that plugs into the VW camper van that I use to visit cities in the UK.

A Wilkinson Cameras lens cleaning cloth, given to me `free` by the manager as a thank you for buying the X-E1 kit.

Finally an iPhone 5s. Not shown as I took the photograph with it.

As photographers, our kit is constantly changing and evolving. For me, it has taken a long time to arrive at this point and now feel that this setup represents my ideal kit, enabling me to shoot in the style I prefer, whilst satisfying my desire to shoot film and digital.